13491

Interesting piece, that. Thanks!

13492

I don’t know about this, Romney is still in the party, even after voting to convict. If Trump is the nominee, I think it’s likely Romney won’t support him.

13493

Great, you agree he has a choice.

Next!

13494

Romney doesn’t need anything from the party. He’s taken his shot at the presidency and fell short. He doesn’t seem to aspire to senate leadership positions. He can afford to piss off the party a little bit in a way that someone banking on support for higher office or to maintain a leadership position cannot.

13495

Yeah, but you got folks like Grassley who is basically one foot in the grave, and still won’t stand up to Trump.

13496

So you’re saying Mitch is correct when he implies that there should be no moral red line for supporting the party’s pick for President.

Cool.

13497

I think tortilla is, correctly, saying that it isn’t really possible for someone to stay in the party, and also oppose the party’s presidential nominees.

There are edge cases like Romney, who’s own family is far more popular in Utah than any other politician could really hope to be, but for the most part the decision is either “get in line” or ditch the party.

The time for Republicans who wanted to oppose Trump but still be Republicans was before Trump became the nominee… But they were, for the most part, too weak to do so.

13498

My read of Romney is that he would very much like to be the Republican nominee, the nominee of the reformed better non-crazy party that he helped create with his principled stance. Much like Liz Cheney.

13499

Oh I suspect so as well, but he knows it won’t ever happen. He and the mainstream Republican party are stuck with each other to a certain degree. I view it as more of a grudging alliance than Romney being a solid party loyalist.

13500

I think that view (that you ascribe to them, not your view that they feel that way) so incredibly naive. I don’t know how you can look at the way the GOP has grown their base over the last twelve years and think that the way to get them to elect you is to be a grown-up about anything.

So maybe it is an honest-to-god moral spine. I don’t think it will amount to anything meaningful, but all things considered, it’s better for him to be on the right side of history than not.

13501

Kennedy made a run at Carter for 1980 nomination.

13502

Sure. As a purely politically-driven, cynically pragmatic, partisan course of action rubber-stamping the party’s presidential nominee, no matter how loathsome you may think that person is, would be the thing to do. Mitch standing by Trump if he gets the nom again, despite calling him out for his actions on Jan 6th is the “correct” thing to do if you don’t care at all about the rule of law or democracy in general. Winning is the only concern.

I ask more of my supposed leaders. I understand this weakens Democrats in a D vs R situation, but I can’t let it go.

13503

So him and two others? :)

13504

But he supported Carter after he won the nomination, didn’t he?

13505

Franken would have gotten my vote before the allegations if he had ran.

I don’t know what it says about me that I supported Edwards and Franken.

13506

Fraken was a decent human being and resigned appropriately. He screwed up significantly, but he’s not a pussy grabber, grifter, and denier of inconvenient reality.

13507

I ask that they be patriots. After the insurrection, patriots would not support Trump. Republicans would.

13508

Right, and it was a non-contact over-a-bulletproof-vest joke picture, which is still crass, but man the GOP gets away with a lot worse.

13509
13510

I don’t really know much about Senator Schatz, but this video of him responding to Hawley is outstanding.